DonorsChoose does involve your principal and colleagues and school when teachers submit requests for funding. Here's how:
- After a project is fully funded, an email is sent to a random selection of teachers from your school that are registered on our site, to alert them to the arrival of your materials and congratulate you on your great work! Receiving these notifications is a requirement to participate in DonorsChoose.
- Your school will receive an email/fax when materials are ordered for a fully funded project. Read more about how we rely on your principal to ensure the integrity of our program. We may reach out to your principal if we don't receive a thank-you package by the deadline you selected to find out if there are any circumstances we're not aware of that could be preventing us from connecting with you. (We'll first try to contact you directly, though!).
- We may call your school to verify a change in address, confirm your teaching position or simply to reach you by phone if we can't connect with you by email or a home phone number.
- In a situation where a teacher is moving to a new public school classroom, we ask the principal to provide consent to teachers who would like to take their materials with them.
- DonorsChoose conducts periodic audits to confirm that teachers meet our eligibility criteria and learn how funded materials are being used in the classroom. Principals may receive an email or phone call from our team if you are randomly selected to be a part of an audit.
- Principals can opt in to receive reporting on projects from your school through our principals page or sign up for alerts about new projects through your school page
We don't rely on colleagues and principals to access your account, post a project, confirm funding for a project, or compile a thank-you package. In fact, it's against our Terms of Use for anyone but you to access or manage your account. Additionally, projects cannot be transferred from one teacher to another, so each teacher must maintain his or her unique account. Read more about the requirements for a teacher using DonorsChoose.